Two FCP Suites and Shared Storage – new angles ?

[Nick Price]

I would check the specs of your G4, but i believe it will be gigabit ethernet. Our G4 siver Tower has 1000baseT etherent port, i.e gigabit.

nick

[Mark Raudonis]

[David Shallis] “So we want to set up a shared storage system that is fast enough for our needs, reliable and easy to maintain, but is limited by a (very) tight budget.”

You want Good, Fast AND Cheap! Read back what you’ve written. You set out what you need in terms of performance, reliability, capacity… and then you say you don’t want to pay for it. If you “cheap out” on shared storage, you’ll get what you pay for.

I’m all for shopping around for the best product, but your expectations are out of line with reality. The specifications you’ve outlined are exactly what Apple’s X-SAN offers… except is ain’t cheap!

Mark

[Gary Adcock]

[Mark Raudonis] “I’m all for shopping around for the best product, but your expectations are out of line with reality. The specifications you’ve outlined are exactly what Apple’s X-SAN offers… except is ain’t cheap! “

I have been testing the MetaSan on the recommendation of Graeme Nattress and other than them not currently having a working version for the Intel Macs I have been very impressed with the functionality.
It is allowing me to have 2 users to be directly connected to my G-speed fibre array without a switch.

I do not feel that Xsan is suitable for HD production, not with more cost effective solutions available from Facilis and now MetaSan for users in smaller environments.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

[Mark Raudonis]

Gary,

I guess it just depends on how large of an installation your talking about. For a small set up (under 10 seats) I would agree with you. But, for anything much larger than that, I don’t see anything on the market that can deliver what X-SAN can. We’re running close to 100 seats and I can’t imagine doing that with a Terrablock or even MetaSan.

mark

[Jacob Altman]

Thanks for your input.

So for a 2 seat mainly DV/HDV but sometimes single stream UC SD setup, do you think a Gb Ethernet feed with MetaSAN will do the trick ?

Thanks in advance.

[Gary Adcock]

[Mark Raudonis] “But, for anything much larger than that, I don’t see anything on the market that can deliver what X-SAN can. We’re running close to 100 seats and I can’t imagine doing that with a Terrablock or even MetaSan.”

Mark
for 100 users working in SD I could not agree more,

But I also know that xsan has been sold into smaller installations that were ill prepared for the the bandwidth (and cost) needed to be able to do uncompressed HD content, and I know of 2 TV stations that have temporarily yanked theirs out, since it is unable to handle uncompressed 8bit HD in realtime both with less than 10 total users.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

[Gary Adcock]

[David Shallis] “So for a 2 seat mainly DV/HDV but sometimes single stream UC SD setup, do you think a Gb Ethernet feed with MetaSAN will do the trick ?”

I am not a fan of handling video over Gig E, in my experience the transfer protocols for ethernet packets are just not fast enough for video production, in addition to be able to handle even 2 simultaneous users the NAS would have to be able to sustain data rates faster than most production units are built for.

Now if your just going to use the NAS as a transfer point that is different, but actually editing off of it is another problem entirely.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

[Mark Raudonis]

Gary,

Yes, we’re only SD at this point. Uncompressed HD is another story. However, DVCPRO HD is approx the same bandwidth as SD uncompressed. So, depending on your format, you can support HD.

As for “ill prepared for the cost”… I never said it was cheap! 🙂 However, compared to a similar Unity installation it’s absolutely LESS EXPENSIVE.

To put it another way… as Paul Simon so aptly sang, “One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor”.

Mark